


I Thought That I Heard You Laughing

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Crisis of Faith, Daggers, Depression, Feelings, Friendship, Frustration, Gen, Love, Ocean, Zolf is still part of LOLOMG as he goes through his shit with Poseidon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23883238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: See this? This is why Sasha doesn’t care for gods. This is why it makessensethat Zolf doesn’t like Poseidon anymore, he’s justtoo hard to stab.Worse than a skeleton even. Worse than anything Sasha’s ever fought. Just awful.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith
Comments: 18
Kudos: 76





	I Thought That I Heard You Laughing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HoloXam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoloXam/gifts).



> So this came out of a conversation with HoloXam and it just had to be written out and shared (and I'm not projecting anything into it at all, nope). Holo I love you thank you for screaming about podcasts with me constantly. 
> 
> As stated in the tags, in this AU Bertie leaves in Prague and Zolf continues with the group and still goes through his shit with his god but also Sasha is (and the others are) there. 
> 
> Title is from REM's "Losing My Religion" because my brain grabbed the phrase and wouldn't let go.

It’s an early morning and real misty when Sasha goes down to the beach. Everyone inside is still asleep, except Grizzop who’d already gone out (and except Bertie of course, who’d left the party after they arrived in Prague and not been heard from since). Sasha walks quietly enough not to awake Azu, who sleeps deeply, or Hamid, who really needs the rest. Zolf’s door is still closed. She hasn’t seen him since the afternoon before, and she stares at the door a good while before leaving him to it.

It’s cold outside, salty in a way that reminds Sasha of Dover, though that’s probably just how all seawater is. She’s been loads more places than she ever thought existed, but this is only the second time she’s seen an ocean. 

She doesn’t like the way the sand shifts under her shoes, or the way it holds her tracks, so she sticks to the rocks as much as possible. They’re slick with water and feel more dangerous than like, roofs that are real high and also real old and crumbly and might fall out from under you any second. Sasha knows how to climb roofs like that, knows how to tell which parts will hold.

It’s not storming this morning. It’d been storming all last week, obviously, cause the whole reason they’re there is to look into the storms. And everyone’d been tense but especially Zolf. Like, Grizzop doesn’t like staying inside, and Sasha has trouble sleeping to the sound of rain, but Zolf... Zolf has been going down to the ocean to shout things, and sometimes staying inside to grumble, and sometimes just sleeping for ages. His water legs have been taken away and he’s making do with some pegleg ones for now, till they can get him nice metal ones with no moral complications on them.

Sasha doesn’t go in for gods and stuff like that. Never would’ve expected to be traveling with two paladins and a cleric, but just cause they’re her friends doesn’t mean the whole religion thing makes a lot of sense. The more any of them talk about their moral stuff, the less sense it seems to make. But with Zolf and Poseidon? Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong and it’s like watching an amateur run a burglary-- you know it’s all gonna fall apart, you just don’t know when or how, and you can’t stop it happening.

She glares out at the water. Stupid ocean. You look at an argument that’s all the oceans against one tired dwarf and it seems more like Zolf’s being picked on than having a fair fight. And she  _ hates  _ that. It’s like, all that ocean could be really cool (except for the parts where you almost drown in it), but it’s just making Zolf miserable. 

Her hands clench and unclench around her knives and there’s not even anything to attack. Not unless she wants to shout at the sea like Zolf does when he--

A dagger _ thunks  _ into the soft sand, just past the water line. Doesn’t work to pin the ocean down at all, it just keeps flowing around the blade. It’s  _ so close  _ to being satisfying. 

_ Splishthunk  _ goes a second dagger, into water that’s a little deeper than before. She’s reaching for new daggers before she can think about it, tossing them with deadly and  _ useless  _ accuracy. Weak spot between the rocks. Particular ripple. Fish. The edge of the foam. She throws all her daggers, and frowns at the hilts sticking out of the sand.

She’ll have to clean them later. Make sure nothing about the sea hurts them, like the salt, or the wet.

Instead, Sasha collects them all, wipes them dry, and then throws them back into the little waves. She does it again and again. And then she’s hunched over, collecting them, and it’s just so  _ stupid  _ to keep throwing. She takes the nearest one and falls to her knees and plunges it into the water. She doesn’t expect it to do anything, but maybe she secretly does, because it’s so disappointing when it doesn’t.

So she stabs again, and again, and the stupid water splashes up and hits her stupid face, and her legs are soaking, and see this? This is why Sasha doesn’t care for gods. This is why it makes  _ sense  _ that Zolf doesn’t like Poseidon anymore, he’s just  _ too hard to stab. _ Worse than a skeleton even. Worse than anything Sasha’s ever fought. Just awful.

She hears Zolf coming up before he gets there. Of course she does. She can tell it’s him by the sound of his legs and the cane he’s been using as he gets used to them. She stabs the waves a few times more for good measure before looking up. Her hair is wet and sticking to her face and she pushes it out of the way.

Zolf’s standing at the edge of the beach and watching her. He smiles, laughs a little, like she hasn’t seen him do in days.

“Hey, Zolf.”

“I think he gets the picture,” Zolf says. Of course he’s laughing, because she’s been fighting the ocean with knives and she probably looks  _ stupid.  _ And now he’s  _ seen  _ her, and she can’t pretend she wasn’t doing it. He shouldn’t’ve come; he should’ve stayed inside where he’s been. 

“Yeah,” Sasha says. “I was just-- It doesn’t  _ work _ .” She glowers at the water.

“No,” Zolf agrees, and maybe he’s not being judgey? At least as far as Sasha can tell, which isn’t very far, except she’s  _ seen  _ Zolf be judgey before and he doesn’t usually sound so happy when he does it. He clears his throat. “But it’s… honestly, it’s probably as close as you’re gonna get. Gods are--  _ Poseidon is _ \-- they do things symbolically. Instead of saying what they mean.”

Sasha sheathes the last of her knives. She stands up and drips. “So y’mean that stabbing the water is basically just stabbing a god?”

Zolf shrugs.

“Good,” Sasha says. “There’s loads of water. I could just stab it all the time.” She trudges back towards Zolf.

“Yeah,” Zolf says. 

For a while he just watches as Sasha tries to squeeze water out of her pants legs.

“You alright today?” she asks. He looks maybe a little bit alright. Comparatively, y’know.

He takes a long breath. “Maybe. Sort of. It’s good to see you. Helps.”

“Oh,” she says. It catches her flat-footed, the thought that she’d be okay looking stupid for a while if it made Zolf feel better. It’s been a long time since she thought anything like that. Not since Brock.

"And,” he says, “I get it too. So. Y'know.”

Sasha doesn’t know.

“Nobody had to-- I mean it’s my thing with Poseidon and I--” He sighs. Runs a hand through his beard. “Thanks, is what I mean."

“Oh,” Sasha says. “Oh, right. Yeah. Anytime.” She fiddles with one of her blades. “Just, it’d be easier to tell if I’d done it right if he had like, blood and guts and stuff. The water’s really hard, I mean, it’s not hard to  _ hit  _ but it’s all just the same kind of  _ wet  _ so I can’t be sure what’s god and what’s, y’know, not.”

“I think you made your point,” he says.

They stand there a while. The waves splash against the rocks.

“What would you do?” Zolf asks, finally.

Sasha blinks. “I’d stab it. Him? Whatever needed stabbing.”

“If you were me. And didn’t have daggers.”

“I can give you some daggers, mate. I’ve got seventeen now.”

He smiles again. “Yeah. Okay.” 

“I mean,” Sasha shifts from damp foot to damp foot. “I don’t know about gods and faith and that kinda stuff. You can believe in something and still not want anything to do with it, y’know? Like, sometimes you’re working for someone and they’re real powerful and you  _ know  _ they are. It’s not the knowing that’s the problem. And it doesn’t do any good fighting them or hoping they’re gonna change, cause they’re not. You either gotta learn to survive anyway, or you gotta run for it. And if you run it helps, right, it helps if there’s people to watch your back? Or if you stay. But, uh, I mean you’ve got them, Zolf. People. And they wanna… y’know, they wanna help.”

“Right,” Zolf says. “I can see that.”

Sasha looks down at the dagger in her hands. She hasn’t done  _ nearly  _ enough stabbing today.

“I don’t-- I’m not sure there’s anything to be done,” Zolf says. “Or what that’d be. Having trouble with a god is. It’s not what you’d expect. But I appreciate it."

Sasha waits for him to say more, to maybe tell her what she should expect, but he doesn’t. 

“Yeah” she says finally. “Look, take a dagger anyway, right?” She pulls one of her middle favorites out of her coat and offers it to Zolf. “It’s kinda wet because I was stabbing, I mean, you might want to clean it properly.”

Zolf takes it and smiles at her again. She’s heard the phrase “watery” used to describe a smile like that, but she’s not on speaking terms with the water, so it’s a… a wavery smile? A smile that means something complicated’s going on. Or maybe it  _ is _ watery. Maybe that’s a pun?

“Let’s go back,” Zolf says. “Gonna storm again before long.”

They trudge back to the house. Zolf’s getting used to his new legs alright, at least, he looks like he’s getting better at walking with them. Sasha kind of wants to scream and kind of feels like she already has been.

“It’s symbolic, right?” she says.

“What?”

“Me giving you the dagger. It’s symbolic, it’s not-- it’s not just a dagger, except it  _ is  _ a dagger and you  _ can  _ stab with it but. Yeah.”

“It’s better’n that,” Zolf says. “It’s something I’m supposed to understand.”

“Okay,” Sasha says. “Yeah. Good.” 

They go back inside, and Zolf’s wrong, it doesn’t storm until late in the evening. He joins them for dinner, though, before going back to bed and closing the door tight again. Sasha could pick the lock easy, but she doesn’t.

He keeps the dagger.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you thought. 
> 
> I can also be found on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores, twitter as @beardspores, and dreamwidth as dwarvenbeardspores.


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